ON THE FARM: Farms in the family

Friday

Aug 24, 2012 at 12:01 AMAug 24, 2012 at 2:18 AM

This is the first in a two-part series on family-owned farms. In next week’s paper we will feature Bridgewater’s Hanson Farm.

The corn is in season at Flint Farm in Mansfield, where David and Matthew Flint – the sixth generation of the family-owned and operated farm – are husking corn on a blazing hot July day with their 78-year old grandmother, Marjorie.

Marjorie prefers picking the tomatoes.

“It’s nice and quiet out there,” Marjorie says with a smile.

Alice Coyle

This is the first in a two-part series on family-owned farms. In next week’s paper we will feature Bridgewater’s Hanson Farm.

The corn is in season at Flint Farm in Mansfield, where David and Matthew Flint – the sixth generation of the family-owned and operated farm – are husking corn on a blazing hot July day with their 78-year old grandmother, Marjorie.

Marjorie prefers picking the tomatoes.

“It’s nice and quiet out there,” Marjorie says with a smile.

She picks the majority of the crop — a couple thousand plants — that start out as seedlings in the farm’s greenhouses during the chilly New England spring. When the ground softens and the chill lifts, the tomatoes are moved outdoors, planted among the farm’s five acres of vegetables — including eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, onions, garlic and squash.

But the 25 acres of sweet corn is by far Flint’s biggest crop and best seller. Each ear is fresh picked and checked for quality. You can even buy it “lazy style” – out of the husk, no mess, no fuss.

Beth Flint mans the farm stand where she graciously greets each customer by name. They are repeat customers and she’s known most of them for more than 25 years.

Beth married into farm life. The New York native met Don Flint in college where she was a secretarial major who never imagined being a farmer. Over the years she has worked outside of the house but she loves life on the farm.

“I came here 30 years ago and I appreciate it even more today,” says Beth, who fervently hopes to keep the farm in the family and operating exactly as it is today.

Settled in to the 1870 farmhouse, sons David, 27, and Matthew, 24, are keeping that hope alive. Both are committed to the family business, and when Beth became ill earlier this year really “stepped up in the spring during mulch season,” she says.

Still, Beth admits she’d like them both to at least try out some other career options.

Over the years there have been offers to buy and develop the land, but no takers in the Flint family.

“I would hate to see it as anything other than a farm,” says Beth.

A century ago Flint was one of many farms in Mansfield. Today it’s the only game in town and both the farm and the family who run it are beloved by the community.

“We take a lot of pride running our family farm and we are blessed with our success,” says Beth.

Founded in 1868, Flint Farm started out as a dairy farm and continued in the cow milking business until 1986 when, as Don puts it, “they determined there must be easier ways to make a living.” Caring for what was the top milk-producing herd in Massachusetts was a 24-hour a day, 365-days a year operation, says Don.

After the cows had been shipped out, the 165-acre Flint Farm expanded its produce production adding more fresh vegetables to the mix and focusing on its main crop — sweet corn.

Then came other things to help boost business year round, including the sale of firewood, Christmas trees each December and bark mulch in the spring. Flint also sells hay bales for both feed and construction sites, and fresh honey produced from the farm’s beehives.

In 2001, the Flints brought dairy back to the farm minus the cows when they opened up the ice cream shop which serves delicious flavors churned out of Richardson’s Dairy in Middleton, Mass. It is the only area of the farm that is not exclusively family run. A staff of about a dozen local girls scoop ice cream from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. during the farm stand season, which runs from mid-July through Halloween.

Scoops and licks lift the business, but the 25 acres of melt-in-your-mouth butter and sugar corn is the lifeblood of the farm. Some of the corn is sold wholesale to places like the Big Apple in Wrentham and several local farm stands. The TPC golf course in Norton stocks up on Flint Farm fresh corn and tomatoes for its big Labor Day tournament each year, Don says. But most of the fresh produce is sold right out of Flint’s Farm stand.

It’s not easy work or an easy lifestyle, but it’s a labor of love for the Flints, who enjoy the fact they can walk to work each day (they live next to the farm) and “every day see something new growing,” Don says.

“Don’t say that,” chides Beth, who acknowledges that there are challenges “some days working with family.”

Other challenges can come from Mother Nature and a variety of critters.

“We don’t say the words, we just spell them out, W-I-N-D and H-A-I-L,” Beth whispers superstitiously.

Starlings and red wing blackbirds wreak havoc too, by attacking the tops of ripe ears of corn right through the husk, making it impossible to sell to customers.

This summer’s hot, dry weather has been tough as well, but Flint’s irrigation system fed by the Canoe River has kept the farm going, the crops growing and the stand full of fresh produce.

And if the Flints are running low on anything they grow, or want to offer items they don’t produce, such as fruit, they have a cooperative and collegial relationship with other farms in the region including Hanson in Bridgewater and C.N. Farm in East Bridgewater.

“We all have a bond,” Beth says of the other family farms.

Beth also has a bond with the people of Mansfield and the surrounding towns.

“The community has been wonderful to us.”

She and her family have returned the favor – donating to a host of events and community activities. From the 12, 3-gallon tubs of ice cream donated to the local Relay for Life, to the ice cream gift cards and corn maze tickets Flint donates to local schools and former New England Patriot Joe Andruzzi’s Foundation, “we try to give back what we can,” Beth says.

In just a couple of weeks Flint Farm will welcome the community back to what has become one of its most popular attractions and made it a destination — the 8-foot tall, intricately designed maze carved into the silage corn field. Each year the maze has a different theme and it’s a surprise until the Flints fly over the farm and take an aerial photo in mid-August. Last year’s design was a pig farmer wearing overalls. On Saturdays and Sundays from Labor Day until the third week in October, Flint Farm visitors can take a hayride tour, learn about the day-to-day operations of the farm, find their way through the amazing maze and relish a rare, rural resource.

Look for part 2 of the Farms in the family series next week when we’ll feature Hanson Farm in Bridgewater.